Dr. Susan Smyth began her role as director of research and development for General Motors’ (GM) manufacturing systems research lab and chief scientist for GM Corporation in August 2006. At the 2009 NCM Forum, she will deliver her insight into global supplier network challenges as a keynote speaker. Smyth began her career at GM in 1991 as a senior project engineer with the advanced engineering group. Since then, she has held a variety of advanced engineering pre-production operation assignments in reverse engineering, computational analysis, rapid prototyping and experimental casting. As a leader in mathematics, in 1999 Smyth formed Manufacturing Technology Applications, a high-tech group responsible for developing business advisor tools for corporate level initiatives. In this capacity, she developed math tools to simulate and optimize numerous business scenarios with corporate level customers ranging from sales and marketing to plant operations. Prior to her current role at GM, Smyth was the global math process leader for manufacturing engineering. She was responsible for developing the math-based strategy and implementation for manufacturing engineering to drive global common math enabled business processes. Under her leadership, math simulations were developed enabling the visualization of manufacturing artifacts and processes from plant layouts and body shop operations, to general assembly sequencing and controls emulation. With simulations for form, fit and function of parts, tooling and equipment in plants advanced to levels where significant impact was made in improving quality throughput and enable world class product launches. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, Masters of Science in Optoelectronics and Information Technology, and a Ph.D. in Physics. |
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